VERY HEARTFELT

Trump Offers Sympathy to 100,000 Virus Victims—in Between Lots of Angry Tweets

The president called the devastating toll a “very sad milestone” as he prepared to announce an executive order against social media companies.

President Donald Trump on Thursday offered his first expression of sympathy for the 100,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus. “We have just reached a very sad milestone with the coronavirus pandemic deaths reaching 100,000,” Trump tweeted. “To all of the families & friends of those who have passed, I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy & love for everything that these great people stood for & represent. God be with you!”

His condolences came amid a morning storm of politically-driven tweets about the Republican-led committee’s review of the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe as well as attacks on his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Trump mocked Biden for wearing a face mask and even retweeted a user who said Biden wearing a mask “endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death.”

Trump, who has downplayed the threat of the coronavirus for months, has characterized the death toll as a relative success compared to the 2.2 million projection if the U.S. had done nothing to mitigate the spread of the virus. The president’s “sympathy” message came as he prepared to announce an executive order on Thursday against social media companies after Twitter applied a fact-check to two of his tweets, flagging them “potentially misleading.”